


Fuse

by daisybrien



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Analysis, Character Study, Fighting, Gen, Poetry, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 11:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5204693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisybrien/pseuds/daisybrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is meticulous. She is brutal. He is powerful.</p>
<p>Together, they are unstoppable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fuse

**Author's Note:**

> For ErurihanWeek 2015.

He is meticulous.

There are those who say that speed is what ruins a great piece of art, the act of rushing working out of favour for the detail and care put into a masterpiece. He proves them wrong with a swing of steely sword as quickly as he snaps a crude remark, artfully decorated with curses of sailors setting sail on seas they’ve never known, words no less flourishing in their detail and peculiarity than pencil against canvas. He is a man of few words harshly said, a man of fast action. He is nothing more than a blur through branches, zipping by in black and green as he navigates expertly with an eagle’s watchful eye, watchful and predatory, no hesitation as he swoops in for his prey.

He is a short fuse, and it takes nothing but the smallest of sparks to set him off. He controls his anger well, stifles the wild twisting of fear and fury in his gut to remember his real purpose, redirecting it to an unending loyalty and a carefully crafted battle. The monsters he kills think nothing of the fury hidden beneath the dangerous accuracy of his blades – they do not think at all, only flash him massive yellow teeth that had crushed the bones of those he had been too stupid to love into a pulp, binged on the innocent with childlike grins and murder in their dead, empty eyes. They are caught off guard, his tactile spin ridding them from the world with a simple and lightning fast nip to the nape, dead before they can sniff his scent and wrap fat fingers around his ribs, see the glint of perseverance and victory in his eye. He already moves on to his next item of prey before his last piece of game has tumbled gracelessly to the ground.

It is his speed that gives him the detail, that makes every slash and thrust of his weapon result in the perfect and clean cut his strength his known for. It is his speed that makes him impossible to see, let alone the grace and power in his stride or the human fault in what society has made their god on earth, but you can always track him by the patterns of the rumbling ground from the thudding bodies and the undying hope and inspiration he leaves in his wake.

#

She is brutal.

She is a flurry of energy and strife, the paradigm of chaos and unrestrained power on the battlefield. There is nothing that can stop her, nothing but the inevitability that her abandon will lead her into the grips of death. Yet she laughs in the face of it, a high, enthusiastic cackle as she dissects her target first with the careful communication and eye of a curious scientist looking for discovery, followed by the almost too late slash of a blade. There is knowledge in her unconvential nature, intelligence her paradox of thought out recklessness; she is the embodiment of unorthodoxy. And she pursues it all with a smile.

Her fuse is not short, nor is it easy to light without deliberation; there is no one who dares to, knowing the results of it to be catastrophic, and knowing that they would be the sole and rightful target of a terrifying and unbridled rage. She is a storm, a hurricane that rips trees from the root as she tears the steaming organs out of the monsters she probes with an inquisitiveness tinged with the black grains of hatred that never seemed to dissipate completely from the pit of her gut. Blades destroy skin and bone in gruesome tyranny, spirit flashes in bright brown eyes and grates through her raw and screaming throat, all ending and mingling in a composure barely held together and a kind smile that causes more uneasiness than the reassurances she wishes to convey yet fails to feel herself.

Her blades are butcher knives, her body a raging and riling pursuit of knowledge and censored intellect that she denies that she can never know and a justice that has never been served; not while humanity is caged like pigs for slaughter, not while her friends have died at the hands of the rightful monsters that have led what little of humanity is left into the darkness. Her brightness and vigour will be what leads it back into the light.

#

He is powerful.

He is the man who leads them into his war at the front, who takes the burden of the soldiers he commands on his shoulders himself. His eyes shine cold with horrors of ugly pasts and a lust for vengeful justice, and sets them cold among the open pastures outside of the walls they are trapped in yet have no choice but to call home. A usual warm blue turns to slate, a glare intimidating with pride in the face of adversity and unending ridicule, born from humble beginnings yet with a stature more regal and strong than the puffed chests and square shoulders found in the false and backward nobility that mock him. In weakness blooms a new strength, in his frailty a new growth; he charges into battle out of balance not from a physical ailment but from the thousands that rush into it with him, offering their hearts and souls and lives to what he is determined to make a fruitful cause, a thousand arms given to him freely in place of the one he had lost.

He does not have a fuse. He is solely possessed by emotion – though he hides it behind the mask of an untouched leader and the booming voice of confident commands – his passion a driving force behind his thirst for a new world. There is no need to lift a blade; he lifts one pointed finger and hundreds will rush to where it aims, only for hundreds to fall in the aftermath, friend or foe indiscernible in such a bloodbath. He does not believe in its futility, only in a distant result, a resolution that he grasps at with straining mind and body for the good of all. Even as titans sink their teeth into his flesh, he reminds himself that each time those monstrous bodies hit the ground it is a victory. Yet he is called heartless even as his bitter tears stain the ground and flood the earth, mingling with the blood of the comrades spilt in his name.

He is no hypocrite, nor is he a dictator. A proper leader endures that of his followers and makes them his equal, and he will not rest on his rank while he watches the world fight for him, will claim and fight for the world that had criticized him yet he loves so deeply that it aches in his chest, gladly walking into the waiting arms of death itself if it comes to it.

#

Together, they are unstoppable.

They are body, mind, and soul, an intermingling of the most powerful and inspired yet the least recognized for the sacrifice of their lives. They are the driving force behind a losing battle in a war that they are determined to win even as the odds stack against them, even as they stain their blades with blood of boiling evil and their hands of crimes committed for what they can only hope is for the greater good. They have killed, the innocent and the damned alike; whether in blind accident or good intention, their hands are dirty. They will lose themselves, their sanity and their humanity only so that it can survive and thrive in the freedom that they will grant humankind.

They are the bomb, the explosion that will bring the fire and the destruction and death needed to clear the world of the evil that had seemingly spawned from nothingness itself, and dissipates to nothing in its death, ending the evil that had poisoned the corrupted and fearful ignorance of mankind. Each slash of the blade, each zip through the trees, each bloody and tattered cloak that weighs them down as they trudge home lacking the bodies of their owners just one more step to what they hope will bring a better life. No matter how hard they actually fight, no matter how much power they put behind it, they can do nothing more than put their ill thought faith into hoping that it will not be in vain.

They kill to bring life, destroy so that there can be rebirth in the nothingness they leave behind. From the ashes of the dead lies the beginning of the living, the rushing blood and beating hearts behind all of humanity in its soon to be restored glory; it is only fair for them to join the ruins of it, walking into the arms of death with an easiness and a long sought after relief, the rest of the world following them in awed inspiration only until they need to go on living in freedom to make their dreams of it a reality.


End file.
